See a new piece of analysis by RAND-researchers analyzing communication dynamics and Twitter-communities with regard to IS-followers and IS-opponents.

While showing methodically the power of big data social network analysis for counterterrorism comms, the study’s recommendations are especially noteworthy:

„Twitter should continue its campaign of account suspensions: This campaign likely harasses ISIS Twitter users, forces them to lose valuable time reacquiring followers, and may ultimately push some to use social media channels that are far less public and accessible than Twitter.

U.S. military Information Support Operations planners, as well as State Department messengers, should continue to highlight ISIS atrocities. The Twitter impact of the burning of the Jordanian pilot as well as previous findings suggesting a relation between ISIS atrocities and ISIS opposition on Twitter indicate that such atrocities may galvanize opponents.

Nations and organizations (such as U.S. military and State Department messengers) looking to countermessage ISIS on Twitter should tailor messages for and target them to specific communities: The ISIS Twitter universe is highly fragmented and consists of different communities that care about different topics.“ (Source: summary)

We will see how these findings impact twitter info wars in the future!

NC4: „NC4 Signal™ is a social media monitoring tool that is designed to filter through the endless flow of information across major social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, and presents you with a customized stream of rich, relevant data in real-time. NC4 Signal provides law enforcement, public safety and emergency management with the ability to leverage social media in developing intelligent insight. Delivered through the Microsoft Azure Government cloud, it is available anywhere, anytime from any web-enabled device.“ (Quelle: Website)

iJet: „iJET’s Global Intelligence solutions are designed to protect your personnel and help to ensure continuity of operations. (…) Our Global Integrated Operations Center (GIOC) is founded upon best practice methodologies pioneered by the world’s most advanced intelligence organizations, and staffed by analysts and subject matter experts with diverse backgrounds appropriate for supporting our nine threat categories – Entry-Exit, Communications/Technology, Legal, Financial, Environment, Culture, Health, Security and Transportation. We maintain an in-depth intelligence database on more than 191 countries and 363 cities. Our expert analysts monitor the globe in 30 languages, 24 hours a day, to ensure that our clients have the best information available to aid in critical decision-making.

Worldcue Global Control Center: iJET’s global intelligence subscription-based products available in a single tool that allows clients to prepare for, monitor and respond to threats that may impact their people and assets around the world.

Intelligence Alerts: SMS- and email-based notifications ensure clients are aware of potentially dangerous or disruptive incidents before they occur, or as they unfold in real-time.

Daily Intelligence Brief: Released at 0630 EST, Monday-Friday, this tactical product covers recent developments by region and includes all alerts and situation reports from the previous 24 hours.

Health Intelligence Monitor: iJET’s weekly publication capturing the latest intelligence on a range of diseases, and more deeply exploring recent developments in the field of travel medicine.

Monthly Intelligence Forecast: Designed as a more long-term, strategic outlook, this publication offers our clients a 30-90-day assessment of key regional developments.

Predata: „Subscribers to the full Predata platform receive access to the prediction engine, which runs regressions between signals and event sets to identify sources indicative of volatility and build predictive indicators based on them. Predictions can be run using current data or benchmarked using historical data to calculate standard statistical measures of efficacy.“ (Quelle: Website)

It is obvious that in the future any kind of structured threat-assessment (e.g., as in personal security and protection or travel security) will have to rely on comparable tools for threat management and risk scanning.

In terms of developing such a toolset for risk and security management cockpits, it will have to cover macro level analysis (see e.g. Stratfor or other providers), should be able to generate short term intelligence on temporal and geo-spatial patterns for crisis assessment (such as Echosec or utilizing the forward-looking capabilities of Blab) and it will need to deep dive into the internet for subtle crisis signals and longer-term build-up of critical situations (e.g. by the help of Recorded Future).

Looking at the corporate security staffing needs many European companies face, when setting the scene for a pro-actively managed global risk landscape, there seems to be quite some room for improvement!

The Institute for Economics and Peace recently has released their 2014 Global Terrorism Index. Well, it’s not just another report. Please have a look at it for the sound analytics behind the expertise and take Your time to reflect on their empirical study on Peace and Religion (a global statistical analysis on the empirical link between peace and religion) as well!

… well, somewhat at least, as there is no longer only Recorded Future on the playing field.

They are ahead of the crowd, as they have rapidly expanded and promoted the integration of other services with their offerings (such as imaging, ethnographic sentiment analysis or forensic data analysis software), making higher value-offerings as well as conceding (at least as subtle byline) that the new toys are by themselves not as far-reaching, as expected …

But, while Google ventures-backed Recorded Future aims high at the intelligence and security communities, Seattle-based Blab seems to be targeting primarily those who want to see the next shitstorm coming right ahead (as a comment at „Gruenderszene“ aptly states it).